Hey, chat. It's me, Houston Runner. 2025's been a fuckin' doozy. It's been a long year, a hard year, and I'm exhausted by it. But in light of every horror that 2025 threw our way, I (and probably many of you) had a lot of games and wonderful people to turn to. Including, on occasion, the duders that run this here good and newly independent website. And so I'm here to commemorate the good games and times that got me through it all. Lesgo.
Avowed
The early stretches of 2025 were a bit of a nightmare for me, honestly. I spent most of the first few months locked up in my room spiraling about the declining state of my country and the violence being enacted on my people and people who look like me. I worried for friends, family, and myself every day, and every other headline and/or post on Bluesky read like an affirmation of my worst fears. In my isolation, I mostly had video games to stave off my doom, and in February, that happened to include Avowed, Obsidian's first-person RPG giving Skyrim a run for its money.
But Avowed wasn't just some perfectly sculpted distraction. Avowed isn't not about the terrible violence empires are capable of. It also isn't not about how the most marginalized people are often the victims of said violence either. And with all that said, I took great joy in its crunchy combat (I miss my lightning-infused rifle every day) and every opportunity presented to me to stick it to the Aedyran empire. I enjoyed it so much that I–who famously hates bloated games–spent about 80-90 hours in this game that marketed itself based on its relatively shorter runtime. And I'd do it again.
and Roger
I know Jan and Dan have already spent some airtime recently talking about and Roger, a game that is best spoken around rather than about, so I won't take up too much more time on it. I also wrote about it within the last few months, and my feelings on it are in much the same place. But I do want to just shout out that this game, which can be completed in like an hour, features just all-time narrative design work. The ways in which and Roger succinctly and wordlessly communicates the ideas of its story by way of its mechanics could (and should) be studied at large. Incredible stuff here at a bargain price, and you're likely to get a good, hard cry out of it. The holidays can be bittersweet, and sometimes you need a cathartic release. and Roger's good for it.
Blue Prince
I'm not done with Blue Prince, and if I had to guess, I'm actually nowhere near its end. Is anyone really? Does it matter? I don't think any other game had people in my circle talking to one another like Blue Prince, muttering about shit that sounded like they were speaking in ciphers. That has to count for something, right?
No other game had us hunched over our notebooks, etching diagrams and scratching incoherent gibberish into their pages this year. Few games in 2025 have elicited as many head-scratching and revelatory moments in equal measure. And even if I don't know what the 46th room of Mount Holly Estate contains yet, I've found that I actually care very little about whatever answers it may hold. The labyrinthine turns of any one run through Blue Prince's shifting manor, the gleeful discoveries and breakthroughs I seem to make at every one of them, and the way my friends light up when I share my own stories with them…that is more than enough for me.
Mario Kart World
Mario Kart World is great for many reasons, like the fact that I got to be the cow, but I really love it for one distinct memory. In the Switch 2's early days, a bunch of us happened to be in Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest at one of the single worst times to probably be in Los Angeles. And amid the palpable fear and worry that hung in the air (right alongside the smoke of nearby charred Waymos), folks stuck by each other, made sure their communities were safe, and lifted their spirits where and when possible. For me, one of those brief flickers of hope and companionship came one evening spent in the backyard of the Giant Bomb Warframe Villa playing Mario Kart World in a setup eerily reminiscent of an early Switch commercial.
There was little of note about the game itself. I think I won the Knockout Tour we played, but I don't care whether I did or not. What I cared about was the company playing with me, including my friend who had just flown across the country with my Switch 2 and delivered it to me. The shared fear among us, the way we came together to beat it back, even for just twenty minutes, and the way we'd do it again and again for the next several weeks and months. But that first time will always be the one I cherish most.
Eternal Strands
Hey, this is another early 2025 game that snuck up on and delighted me at a pretty stark point in the year. There's a lot to love about Eternal Strands, which is the debut game from Yellow Brick Games, like its element-based magic system and the physical properties of the world, which invite you to play in its delightfully rendered sandbox. I truly never got tired of luring a flying monster down to the ground, using an ice spell to freeze its claws to the ground, and gravity-blasting myself onto its back, where I'd mount it like I was in some hybrid of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Shadow of the Colossus.
I think what has stuck with me most about Eternal Strands is Casmyn, though. Games, especially RPGs, have a long history of lovable companions, but Casmyn is the first time I felt drawn to one that felt ripped out of my own life rather than some preconceived fantasy. Casmyn is the game's quartermaster and also one of the main character's confidantes and potential romances, the latter of which I did not know or expect of Eternal Strands going into the game. It was a nice surprise to find out, and while it feels silly to admit here, it was especially affecting to trip and fall into a romance with Casmyn because she kind of reminds me of… well, someone I knew. And that is all you're getting out of me about that. Anyways, thanks Eternal Strands. That was sweet of ya.
Skate Story
I did not know Skate Story was a New York game until I played it. Now, I'm rarely one of those insufferable "New York or die" guys, but Skate Story makes me want to be one so bad, man. New York or fucking die, folks.
Skate Story is not only a literal, albeit hellish, kind of recreation of the city I've called home my whole life. It is also the embodiment of many things I love about the place too, some of them more intangible than others. It is singular. It is bumping. It is overwhelming. It is downright odd. It is poetic. It's elusive. And it is so beautiful. So complex. So goddamn cool. So hard to parse, but easy to want to get to know. Paired with the game at the top of this list, it's the closest a game has ever felt to home. I'm still finding the words for this game, but suffice to say, this shit means something to me, man.
Promise Mascot Agency
l have another piece elsewhere about exactly why I love Promise Mascot Agency's long list of chorework and the weirdos to whom the game endeared me. In the interest of avoiding repeating myself, I think the second-best endorsement of Promise Mascot Agency I can offer is to just run down its countless highlights:
- Yakuza shit, especially the OG Japanese voice actor behind Kiryu from the Yakuza series.
- Your best friend in the game is a homicidal thumb named Pinky. They eventually run for mayor.
- You upgrade a Kei truck enough times that it eventually flies. Also, it can grind on rails.
- One of its best recurring characters is a crying Tofu block. Another is a big cat who works adjacent to porn and is covered in…something.
- It's high-key a deckbuilder, if you're a sicko for that kind of stuff.
- It's also a collectathon, and if you're okay with the normal platforming movement of those games being adapted to a vehicle, there's some fun to be had here.
- It's also a management game, because why not?
- Jesus Christ, Kaizen Game Works, relax.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
Talking about Hollow Knight and its exceptional sequel feels a lot like talking about Dark Souls. Everyone has made many of the same points in different ways, and though I don't feel the well has been quite exhausted here yet, it is difficult to think of something that wasn't already brought up as part of the several discourses that kicked up around the games already. So instead of talking about the game, which I'm sure many have already played and loved (or hated) this is what I will say, and it's a point I've seen shared before: I think we let down Silksong.
I think the games media apparatus is clearly in shambles right now, and I don't know if it'll ever recover. And I know this not just because I've been shuttled between several websites with steadily decreasing budgets over the years, but also because Silksong is such a rich and dense game and so much of what we wrote and said about it online barely scratched its surface. Its themes about the plights and perils of motherhood could not be more timely, given the way that this country keeps trying to police women and their bodies. The religious violence and oppression seen across the Pharloom's Citadel is aptly ripped from our daily headlines and horrendously curated timelines. The hulking, bloated corpse of its once vibrant kingdom is beginning to look eerily like our own declining empire. And yet little of the work surrounding Silksong rose to the occasion and interrogated these threads, my own included. What little did likely fell through the cracks. Such is unfortunately too often the case in this space nowadays, and I hope that a time comes where these woes feel like a distant memory and we can talk about great games like Silksong in the way they deserve to be spoken of.
Öoo
Öoo is a weird game about a caterpillar caught and eaten by a bird. It's a fun premise, but one that I barely considered for more than a second before moving onto the platforming challenge immediately ahead of me. Eventually though, the inner workings of this winged beast–this bird's fucking innards, of all places–quietly reveals itself to be one of the densest, liveliest, and most reactive worlds a game has ever dropped me into. Of course, it would be, it's a living organism. All of us are a mess of complicated systems interfacing with one another in (often) harmonious ways. And if you were to ask me what really speaks to me in a game, it would largely be that description.
Months later, I still can't quite find the word to define Öoo besides maybe "magic." It was simply magic to discover, for example, that the key to solving a series of puzzles was using a bomb (the only ability the game gives you) to hold down a button (or is it a muscle here? A tendon?) that opened a door in an entirely different region of this poor bird I was tasked with wiggling around inside of. It was magic to find that blasting myself into a certain kind of teleporter–no, I have not stopped to consider what organ this is analogous to–at an angle allowed me to exit out the other side of it and carry my direction and momentum. It was magical using combinations of these and other methods to defy the expectations of a simple 2D platformer (which Öoo is anything but) to move keys across levels and screens to unlock further depths and even more complicated techniques.
If a wordless puzzle game stretching one central mechanic to devilish lengths inside of a deeply considered, immersive sim-like environment sounds like the kind of thing you can get down with, there are few games as expertly crafted to provide a magical experience for you as Öoo.
Despelote
The more I think about it, the further I'm convinced that Despelote may just be one of the finest and most important video games of my lifetime. It feels nearly impossible to put into words why this game about an Ecuadorian child kicking a ball around his hometown has been so impactful though. Maybe it's just because I see a lot of myself in Julián, the young boy at the center of Despelote, and an autobiographical rendering of the game's lead developer in his youth. We were both kids with dreams of fútbol stardom that wound up in New York. And seemingly ever since, we've found a home and place to explore our lives and identities in the world of video games.
But it's more than just representation. You spend years in these circles talking ad nauseam about the several disciplines that must be honed and executed upon in concert, often by dozens if not hundreds of people at a time, in order to even make a game, let alone a really good one in one of the several franchises that largely take up all the air in these end of year conversations and ruminations. But once in a lifetime, it seems, something like Despelote comes along that reminds you how truly beautiful these things can be when someone pours so much of their own love and woe and life and memories and passion into them. Something that seems to transcend the medium as a whole. That or something that evolves it entirely. Every step, every kick, every hazy memory of Julián's childhood we're allowed to stumble through feels so purposeful and so rich in large part because it doesn't look, sound, or feel like anything else.
Despelote is more than an exemplary work of buttons, triggers, filters, and sound bites stitched together. It is an invitation into someone's head and heart. Their home. An immaculate and transformative installation woven from the very fabric of their being. It is everything I could ever want a work of art to be. Es un milagro.